Solstice
by Besarki
Summary: To some, the snow is a beautiful spectacle. To others it’s a reason to celebrate. To others still, it’s a fantastic experience. But to Asakura Anna, it means nothing but bad memories. With nothing but a smile and a loving heart Hana tries to change that.


Besarki: I'm not as thrilled with this one--it's mediocre at best, but it definitely gets progressively better, and I'm pretty proud of the ending, or at least the last few lines. Wish I could have put them to a better story, but meh. Whatever. You can't be happy with everything you write, after all.

It's kinda weird, if you ask me. To be honest, I think Anna used to be my best character to write in-character. For whatever reason, I'm kind of worried that I'm getting progressively _worse_ at writing her (or maybe it's just this story). D: Oh noes! Because of this, I randomly switched to writing Hana more in the middle of the story then switched back to Anna at the end. I'm more comfortable with him--probably because he's younger. Bah.

Was supposed to post this on the 21st, 22nd, or 23rd like I did with Equinox, but it wasn't done, so today it is.

Disclaimer: Shaman King and all related elements belong to Takei Hiroyuki and Shueisha.

* * *

It was something she never told anyone. Something she kept to herself. Something she was pretty sure Yoh had already figured out, despite what she may like to believe otherwise.

It was something she considered a dark secret, a pathetic insecurity, a ridiculous phobia. Had the others known, she'd instantly become the laughingstock. Nobody would ever take her seriously again. How could they, when she was afraid of something so petty and ridiculous?

Something so...innocent?

Even she was absolutely ashamed to admit the truth. The horrible, degrading truth.

The fact was, deep down, Anna hated the snow.

To be brutally honest, it was really the only thing she remembered from her early childhood. When she looked back, all she saw was snow. Snow, like white, icy tears falling from the melancholic sky. Snow, flakes which burned her when they touched her skin. Snow, which built vast impenetrable walls around her frozen heart--walls that only one person had ever been able to melt.

And yet, the freezing pain remained with her, acting as a reminder of all the horror she had been subjected to--just because she was different. Just because.

And because of all this, it wasn't easy to be a good mother when her young son dragged her outside to play in the snow, especially when he kept lobbing snowballs at her.

"_Kaa-chan!_" Hana whined as he threw yet another silver-white orb at his mother's pale face.

"Sorry, Hana," She quietly replied, not even flinching as she wiped the freezing slush off her cheeks. "I'm really just not in the snowball-fight mood today."

Hana groaned. "It's a game where you get to legally _maul_ people, Kaa-chan! It's like your theme song, but in the form of a game!"

Anna offered him the smallest trace of a smile, weak as it may be.

"Okay...let's play in the snow," She said quietly, weakly, and very reluctantly.

Hana beamed, picking up a glob of snow and forming it into a small ball. "HYA!" He yelled, chucking it at her. She went to sidestep, but moved a moment too late and with only half the necessary distance.

"Kaa-chan, you're supposed to MOVE!"

"Sorry," She apologized. "Let's try again."

"O...okay." He picked up another snowball and threw it at her. It hit her square in the face.

Hana glared, curling his hands into fists. "What are you doing?!"

She shook the snow off, combing a hand through her hair to rid it of the small slabs of ice. "I guess...I'm just not very good at this game."

"No kidding! Ugh!" He slapped his face, not minding a bit that it coated it in snow from the bits that clung to his gloves. He glanced to his right and noticed a stray stick lying abandoned on the ground. An idea popped into his head. "Let's try something else!"

She smiled weakly, unable to share in his enthusiasm. All she wanted to do was go inside, wrap herself up, and stare at the fire.

Hana waddled over to the stick and immediately plopped down beside it. He waved his mother over and then set to gathering up a huge pile of snow. "We're going to make...a snowman! Everyone loves those!"

Anna couldn't bear to tell him that anything that had _anything_ to do with snow made her want to scream.

"Okay, you just build a bottom snowball like this," He said, building the base, his gloves smoothing the rounded sides. "Then build two more to put on top of it. I'll build the middle. You can make the head, kay?"

She said nothing as she bent down to lift up a handful of snow. When she stood, she simply stared at it, watching it as it slipped through her thin, ungloved fingers.

Hana paused in his snow-building to glance up at his mother. He noticed that she was looking rather...distant again. He was beginning to worry that bringing her out here was a bad idea.

"Kaa-chan...are you okay?" He asked nervously.

She started and then quickly threw him a weak and very obviously _fake_ smile.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" She spoke with the same words as she normally did, but her voice betrayed her feelings. She wasn't a very good actor...

And Hana was no fool. He was perfectly aware of what was wrong with her, but his idea of therapy didn't seem to be working as well as he had hoped that it would.

"Well, you're not doing a very good job at making the head..."

She glanced down at her open hand. There was barely any snow left in it. She sighed. "I'm sorry. I just zoned out again."

_You're telling me._

"Well...do you want to try again or...make snow angels or something?" The look on her face told him that snow angels were a definite no-go. Too much contact with the snow. Or maybe it was more specifically just laying in the snow. He'd seen abandoned children on the streets before, and it wasn't uncommon to see them alone, shivering and lying with their bare faces again the freezing snow during the winter. He tried to imagine that, only on a mountain--more specifically _Osorezan_--with a blizzard raging. For whatever reason, his mind always seemed to put a huge red monster with a mustache and little black horns in the background.

He suppressed a shudder. Living like that could drive anyone to excessive levels of fear and _hate_. From what he'd been told, his mother had not only lived like that, she'd also very nearly _died_ like that, as well. He was _that_ close to never existing. Scary.

"Okay, let's just finish this snowman," He suggested.

Anna wanted to roll over and die. Why was he so dedicated to this? All she wanted was to go inside and be away from all of this misery. Was that too much to ask?

"Hana--"

"What, you don't want to make the snowman now?" He demanded, rather irately. Her indecision and uncharacteristic mousiness was getting rather irritating.

"Hana, I just--I just have a million other things to do right now, okay?" She retorted, furiously. She didn't have anywhere _near_ enough patience to deal with him right now. She needed to get out of here _now._

"Fine! Run away like you always do!"

"WHAT?!"

"You're a coward, Kaa-san! You're twenty two _and _a mother and you still act like a child!"

"Oh, you're one to talk!"

"I'm six!"

"This conversation is over," She said curtly, turning on her heel and storming toward the house.

"That's right! Run away, coward! Run away from all your problems!"

She immediately came to a halt, her eyes blazing. "You. Don't. Understand. Anything."

He gave no response, and she turned around to glare daggers at him. Her hard expression dropped instantaneously.

Hana stood before her with guilty tears running down his face--all defiance gone.

"I'm sorry, Kaa-chan," He said, sniveling.

She stared at him in shock, totally derailed by his sudden mood change. What in the world...? Hadn't he known that she would retaliate when he yelled at her? But then...it wasn't like Hana to get so upset, to feel so _guilty_ over something so small. She had a sinking feeling that Hana knew something that she didn't want him to know.  
_  
Had her son only been trying to help her this entire time?_

"Tou-chan says you don't like the snow," Hana suddenly said. "I understand _that_. I understand, Kaa-chan, and I brought you out here anyway."

She had been right. Yoh _did_ know. He knew...and he had told Hana? Why?

"Tou-chan said that, when it snows, you might not want to go outside all that much, and that, if you did...you'd probably be sad." He paused to stare at her with the most heart-breaking eyes that she had ever seen. "I don't want you to be sad, Kaa-chan."

Her face fell dejectedly and her arms hung limply at her sides. She could say nothing. She felt horrible.

"Tou-chan said that your parents were really heartless to you...when you were little...and that the snow made you think of that," He said, admitting that he basically knew the entire story. It was something that Anna had wished he would never have to hear. She couldn't imagine what possessed Yoh to tell him such a horrid tale.

"Hana..."

"I'm sorry if I made you sad." His eyes fell to the ground, his _and_ her heart bleeding more and more with each word spoken. "I just thought that...maybe...if you had fun out here, then...then you wouldn't think about all those bad memories anymore. I was just trying to help...but I guess I messed up. I messed up...and I'm sorry."

And somehow, despite everything, Anna found that she could smile. If nothing else, Hana had the _biggest_ heart of anyone she had ever known.

The silence that passed between them was deafening, saddening, and horrendously heart-wrenching. Hana couldn't help but fear that in his misguided attempt to make things better, he might have just made them a thousand times worse.

"I'm sorry, Kaa-chan," He said, closing his eyes and walking back towards the house.

There was a gap of about four seconds before a cold ball of snow came and blasted him in the back of the head. "Huh?!" He gasped, whirling around.

And there stood Anna, grinning deviously with _another_ snowball in her hand. "That was payback for earlier."

Hana squealed as he ducked out of the way of another hurled snowball, the look on his face a mixture between elation and shock.

He glanced back up at her to see if what he was seeing was really and truly...real. Judging by the fact that his mother was hurriedly forging another snowball, he guessed that it was.

"I suck at snowball fights, do I?" She snickered, pelting him with three more snowballs.

Hana dove out of the way, laughing. He plunged his hands into the snow and quickly constructed another snowball to throw at her. He threw it just as another one smacked him in the face.

And there was nothing he could do to keep from laughing.  
---_0_---_0_---_0_---_0_---_0_---  
"I'm telling you, Hao, I really don't mind living a normal life like this. Sure, we've got like nothing, but it's a nice life, and I wouldn't trade it for the world," Yoh explained, walking in his front door with the ghost of his twin brother levitating by his side.

"Your life _must_ be incredibly boring."

Yoh shrugged. "It can be, but I'm pretty big on sleeping, you know, so being bored isn't really a problem for me," He laughed.

Hao rolled his eyes. "Yoh, I couldn't live your life for twenty minutes, let alone eighty or ninety years."

Yoh stopped to stare strangely at his brother. "Who says I'm going to live eighty or ninety years?" He asked. A moment later, a huge smile broke out across his face and he resumed walking. "I'm gonna live to be a hundred!"

The Shaman King couldn't help but shake his head. "What an exhilarating seventy eight more years you have to look forward to."

The younger frowned. "Meh, seventy eight is a weird number. I'm gonna live to a hundred and _two_ so I can make it eighty!"

Hao just sighed. "You...are a moron."

"Thanks! Anna calls me that all the time!"

At Yoh's childish antics, Hao had to laugh. "Okay, Yoh then answer me one question: Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me that you're happy?"

Yoh paused when he reached the family room. A glance into the dimly lit room revealed his wife and son, both completely soaked with traces of unmelted snow in their hair, wrapped up and fast asleep on the family's small couch. A warm smile came to his face.

"Yes. Yes I can."

* * *

Besarki: Some of my worst work in the Shaman King fandom, but I love the ending line. Not fond of how pathetic I made Anna seem, and no, I don't actually believe she fears the snow. I just used it as a plot device. This _is_ fanfiction, after all.

Be on the lookout as I'm BOUND to redo this one at some point. It had a lot of potential, but I wrote mostly when I didn't feel like writing. Sigh! The woes of a fanfictioneer! Hehehe. Happy holidays everyone! Hope you all have a Merry Christmas tomorrow if you celebrate it. *Decorates crowbar with bells and ribbon* There, now I'm all festive! ^-^

Oh, and for the reference, Champagne Supernova makes _horrible_ writing music. Everything was all cute then I changed it to this song and I made them fight. CURSE YOU OASIS! *Shakes fist*

REVIEW OR I'LL LEAVE IT THIS HORRIBLE FOREVER!! HAVE A HAPPY HOLIDAY AND AN AWESOME NEW YEAR, MUNCHIES!


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